Ifs

“If you love something let it go free. If it doesn't come back, you never had it. If it comes back, love it forever.” What if it comes back totally different from when you let it go and you discover that you really can’t stand it now? What if, while it was gone, you decided that you hadn’t really liked it anyway, and are sorry to see it return? What if you do want it back, and it wants to come back, but it doesn’t have the instincts of a homing pigeon and simply can’t find its way? What if…

Happiness

Happiness is ghosting along in the dark, the boat barely moving in the zephyrs, wondering if you’ll have enough speed to fetch the mooring if you can even get to it. And you can’t quite bring yourself to curse the engine that once again won’t start, because it is such a lovely evening, such a beautiful boat, all is perfect, enjoy, contemplate, and scull, scull, scull!

Happiness is sitting on the back deck wondering what to do with yourself when suddenly a load of your friends swarm down the dock, bearing food and drink.

Happiness is being moored up in your favorite cove with your favorite friends watching a brilliant sunset while eating delicious fresh fish chowder.

Happiness is sitting in a cozy warm house on a chilly pouring rain day, with a big floppy dog flinging toys onto your lap, and a cat who keeps insisting that if you would only wise up and open the correct door, it wouldn’t be raining outside that one!

Happiness is making good money in very few hours.
Happiness is enjoying most of the work you do.

Happiness is having bags of time to spend doing important things: Staring out your very own shop window at the boats, loving the fact that there isn't one deflatable nor outboard among the dinghies at the dock, sailing, hiking, biking, swimming, kayaking, rowing, sun worshipping, exploring socializing singing dancing loving every minute of it. Even the beach traffic full of New Jerksey drivers.

Happiness is summer in New England.

Safe Fishing

On my voyage south on my sailboat, trying to escape the encroaching cold weather, I stopped in the vicinity of my brother’s neighborhood, where I rentied a slip for a few days to visit family and enable them to see my boat. And to replace the recently stolen dinghy, but that’s another story. My brother stayed aboard for a couple of nights to see what it was like to sleep on a boat. One evening, he wanted to fish off the back of the boat. I gave him what gear I had. Since I normally troll a line while sailing, I didn’t have the necessary equipment for stationary fishing. Sitting at the back of the boat with a line hanging over, my brother was not happy with the result. After a while, he asked me “Do you have any condoms?” I stared at him, my mind trying to wrap around the reason why my brother was asking such a personal question. Finally, I answered, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact I do.” “May I have one please?” Well, okay, maybe he had a hot date later. I went below and got him one. He removed it from the package, inflated it, tied a knot in the end, and fastened it onto the fishing line! We sat there watching the condom float bob behind the boat, glad that the boat was docked bow in so dockside passersby could not see it, and glad that it was too dark for opposing boat owners across the channel to make out what it was that was drifting off the stern. And as the complete absurdity of it registered, we began to laugh hysterically, Despite the fact that we still caught no fish, would such a novelty item be marketable?

I went rowing yesterday for the first time in a year. Okay, I had paddled inflatable dinghies during that time, but deflatables are not real boats and therefore do not count. Yesterday I rowed an honest to goodness rowboat. Miraculously, all my troubles melted away with each stroke of the oars. How I had missed rowing! Life, which had already been steadily improving anyway, is now suddenly completely all better! I had such a great time rowing yesterday that I went back to do it again today, going much further.

Until I sold it last year, I had the same hard dinghy and the same set of oars for twelve years. The formula was simple. In up to 30 knots of wind, I could go places in the dinghy. Over 30 knots, I got blown away. During that ‘rowing decade’ I had been offered hundreds of tows from others in dinghies with outboards, and gotten almost as many surprised looks when I turned them all down. I lived to row. I often wondered if I went sailing simply to anchor the big boat and row around a new piece of water in the dinghy.

It’s not that I have anything personal against outboards. Most cruising folks I know have them. I have even sailed aboard several boats equipped with inflatables and outboards. All I can say is, if any landlubbers out there have the idea that cruising is all about lounging on tropical beaches, it’s not. It’s all about fixing the outboard. Over and over and over, until the sun goes down and the skeeters come out and you have to give up on that beach because you can’t get there; rowing an inflatable is like rowing an egg.

I’ll stick with my hassle free oars attached to a proper rowing dinghy any day of the week, leading me to think, that if I am this passionate about rowing, maybe I should save the aggravation, expense, and hard work of getting another cruising sailboat together and simply get a good rowing boat to row around the world!

This cruiser is trying to avoid the dead outboard

syndrome by carrying two at once.

HOWEVER,

That simply lead to two dead motors at once!

Pass the oars, please, I have to go rowing.

Blasphemy

Having lived on a boat for most of the last six years, I have lost touch with a lot of modern advances. For example, back in the old days, when a smoke detector needed a new battery, it screamed an annoying beep at you every minute until you beat it to death with a broom handle, because it was a holiday weekend, all the stores were closed, you were fresh out of 9 volt batteries, and you decided that catching on fire and not knowing it would be highly preferable to hearing that piercing noise every minute.

This weekend, while staying in the home of friends, cat sitting for their two wildly entertaining felines, I heard the voice of GOD coming from above. Finally, proof positive! God IS a woman. And god wants us to know that the battery is low. She told me that intermittently for the better part of a day, while I pondered. And then, she stopped saying it, leading me to wonder…Did Jesus show up with a battery charger? Praise be, I was saved, since I had no idea how I was going to ascend to those lofty heights of that cathedral ceiling with a new battery.